The Disappearance

by Philip Wylie

  There was no date.

  The original might be waiting for him in Miami—although Jim Elliot was supposed to forward his important mail.

  The original might be lost, as many letters had been in the first days.

  Gaunt got to his feet heavily and walked from the apartment, locking its door. He rang for the elevator. He would not need to seek out men in the building who might have talked to his son, or to hunt up his son’s friends. He pushed the button again. His mind named the lost members of his family, listing them swiftly, as it frequently did of its own accord. Edwin, though, would come back from New Guinea. Edwin remained.

  The philosopher, unlike his ardent son, had no hope—if it was hope—in a rumor about women surviving in New Guinea. Edwin could search the wide world over. He would find no woman, no girl, no female baby.

  Gaunt walked slowly in the wintry twilight.

  PART III

  The Unloved

  9

  WHICH CONCERNS VARIOUS ARTICLES OF FAITHLESSNESS.

  Morning and May. The sun—insistent focus of attention in South Florida, winter pride and summer anathema—rose out of the eastern sea. It burned redly through a cloud bank and thrust soon-white rays among the houses of Miami, the skyscrapers, the beige

  buildings and buff, cream, eggshell, jade, lavender, mauve, tan, turquoise and pink. On the way, it touched the Gulf Stream, lighting up the blue fires there. Beyond the pastel city it flared on the sawgrass of the Everglades, glittering amongst green shoots; it threw down the rectilinear shadows of tree trunks in the pine forests, penetrated the jungle hammocks, turned the gray canals to azure, hunted out otters at their den mouths and shone in their fur, flashed on the iridescent backs of ducks, set tens of thousands of alabastrine birds winging from rookeries and routed testy moccasins. So it came to the Gulf of Mexico, with Yucatan and Texas dark beyond, and the Pacific, China—the shade of a next night behind, forever following.

  Gaunt stirred in his sleep and yawned and made sounds and opened his eyes. The clock said six. He went slowly to the bathroom. His bearded face looked back from the mirror, like a goat’s, he thought. He washed. Still in pajamas that needed mending and lacked a button, he moved down the stairs. Rufus jumped from a soiled divan, wagged his tail, hurried to the door and escaped in the scented, dulcet morning.

  Gaunt yawned again, pushed through a swinging door that whipped back and forth in a sucking oscillation behind him, and leaned on the stainless-steel kitchen counters to see the thermometer. It was seventy-eight. Be a warm day.

  A Chemex, a coffeemaker shaped like an hourglass, stood half full on the back burner of the stove with an asbestos pad beneath it. Gaunt turned a switch, watching for the tiny light but it did not go on.

  “Hell and damnation,” he muttered.

  Electric power was underendable now.

  The Sterno had given out too, it proved.

  He returned to his living room. For a moment, with an expression of sadness in his eyes, he gazed at the brilliantly colored furnishings—the purple draperies with the Chinese print, the purple and blue striped chairs, the chartreuse sofa where the dog had slept, the black bamboo valances and the free-form chartreuse rug, dirty now. Dirty from the tracked mud of rainy days in March and April. He heaved a sigh and went to the fireplace.

  On the white terrazzo beside it was a stack of split wood and a pile of newspapers.

  The papers displayed black headlines telling of excursions, alarms, rumors and victories in such unremitting capitals that the mind was unmoved. Gaunt wadded up a front page that said: RUSS MISSION ARRIVES and, below that, WILL CEMENT PERMANENT

  PEACE. Women First on Agenda.

  He laid kindling on the paper, lit his fire, returned to the kitchen, dumped the contents of the Chemex into a pan and set it on the andirons over the blaze.

  Then he pressed the switch of a battery radio. Nothing but dance music. He smirked his ragged whiskers. There was a movement on foot, backed by churchmen, to stop the playing of dance music, on the grounds that it brought women to mind and gave rise to “unnecessary sex stimulations.” There were countermovements, dozens of them, to keep alive by every possible means the memory of women and the sense of their presence—somewhere. Connauth was coming to see him about it, later that day.

  His coffee boiled up suddenly filling the room with aroma; he snatched the pan and took a cup—an expensive, thin China cup—from the built-in sideboard. He poured, put in a spoonful of brown sugar, stirred, and sipped. He said, “Ah!”

  With the cup in one hand and the hot pan in the other, he went through glass doors to the porch. He sat down. The annuals were still beautiful. Byron had seen to that, watering when the pressure was high enough, fertilizing with compost, wedding, Phlox—

  a tapestry of many reds, cynoglossum, perfumed edge of alyssum (blue now, and not the plain white he had known as a boy) and waist-high snapdragons.

  If they came back suddenly, he thought, at least they couldn’t complain about the annuals.

  He drank two cups of coffee, went back to the kitchen, fixed three slices of stale bread in a hand grill, and returned to the fireplace. There, squatting, he half toasted and half smoked the bread. From the defrosting refrigerator he took a lump of butter and a jar of jam. On the porch again, he spread his toast and chewed it slowly.

  A car passed on the distant boulevard. He heard Gordon Elliot shouting at Rufus and he heard Gordon’s father tell the boy not to wake the whole neighborhood. He saw Teddy Barker leave his garage for his new job at the bank; Teddy was one of the government men, now, assisting in the restoration of credit.

  Gaunt finished his breakfast. He looked at the miscellany on the long porch—a coat dropped in a chair weeks before, a tie taken off when the temperature had risen or guests had departed, a plate scraped clean and all but hidden under a newspaper, grit and black muck on the marble-chip floor. Odd. He had always imagined himself a neat man and thought Jim Elliot (for instance) casual about appearance. But Jim kept his premises immaculate; it was the Gaunt home that suffered from neglect.

  Thinking now of the fact—of the myriad procrastinations, the innumerable little jobs postponed—he could see why they said of women’s work that it was never done and why Paula, Hester and even Edwinna had always seemed to have something in their hands. A cup or plate, a magazine or book, an article of clothing, a whisk-broom.

  Seized, now, with feelings of shame, and mindful of his expected visitor, Gaunt took off the tops of his pajamas, for comfort, and began to collect strewn items. Clothing he piled at the foot of the stairs. Dishes he took to the sink. Papers and debris he carried to the fireplace where it burned with unwanted heat. In due course he fetched a broom and swept such dust and small odds and ends as he could out through the many doors and off various small, brick porches.

  Sweating, still dissatisfied, he meditated over the stained white marble and presently nodded to himself. He went out on the lawn, tested the pressure at the faucet, and attached a garden hose. Paula, he supposed, would be horrified. But after he had rolled and lifted the rugs he discovered that it worked, worked so well—with the aid of a mop and a squeegee—he wondered why women scrubbed terrazzo, why they didn’t simply hose it down. What he failed to observe was the spotting of various fabrics where the hose splashed them and the soaking of veneers and of the leg joints of several chairs—damage which, if it occurred frequently enough, would dissolve glue and start warping and loosening. He was unaware, too, that the marble floor had been waxed. He shoved out the last puddle with the squeegee, cranked every window wide open and propped back every door to let the May breeze dry out rooms which, in his view, were pristine. Bugs entered, unnoticed.

  When Byron arrived, Gaunt asked diffidently if he would mind washing up “a few” dishes. Byron, who had endured the days in a stoic world of his own, smiled for once: “I been thinking some time of suggesting it.”

  He was not disturbed by the fact that a ‘“few” dishes constituted nearly
all those in the house. And Gaunt noticed later in the day that the grizzled old gardener was hanging fresh-laundered shirts and underwear on the back-yard line. . . .

  With this work done, the philosopher climbed upstairs and peered again at his mirrored face. The barbershops were open again, he knew—and he had no shaving cream. But going to one meant gasoline—and gas was rationed. He soaped his beard, finally, put a new blade in his razor, and attacked; the ordeal was not so painful as he had expected. Afterward, he put on slacks and a shirt picked from a pile of worn clothes Paula had long ago set aside to “donate.” It was a clean shirt, at any rate. Sandals—no socks—

  and he was dressed.

  His study, which he had cautioned Byron not disturb, was a shambles. Books lay everywhere. Letters, telegrams, printed scientific papers, unopened second-class mail, magazines and newspapers littered the floor in what seemed at first absolute disorder and only on close inspection revealed a vague method. His wastepaper basket had disappeared under a pyramid of twisted and balled typewriter paper. This heap Gaunt considered for a moment; his eyes traveled to the fireplace in the room; but he decided not to burn the trash now. It would make the place too hot. And he might someday want something in the discarded pile. He might remember that, somewhere in it, he had set down a line, an idea, a hint of possible value to the summation he had for many weeks been preparing, the summation of all relevant material on the inexplicable disappearance of womankind.

  That was his task, as chairman of the Committee for Evaluation.

  Most of the matter on the floor had to do with the work in hand—letters and reports from his committeemen and from scientists, bulletins, abstracts, technical papers and journals.

  He had been invited-even urged-to remain in Washington and work there. But he had refused, pointing out that his own home, with the solitude it afforded, would better enable him to think, collate and write. Actually, two different factors had motivated his decision to return to Florida. Post-vanishment, postwar Washington was having its customary raw spring; the city was drab and uninviting; two men had crowded into it for every missing female, so it was more thronged and uncomfortable than ever. In addition to that, Gaunt had felt an indefinable need to return to the spot where he last had seen Paula and to remain near to it as much as possible.

  He sat down now in the familiar swivel chair and stared at the pine-and-palmetto vista outside his window. Soon he put on his spectacles. He reread the last sentence on the half-typed page in the roller of his typewriter:

  “The most profitable line of inquiry, therefore, may lie in the psychological, rather than the physical sciences; and a brief resume of the state of that branch of knowledge at this time may be of use to those who are somewhat unfamiliar with the subject.”

  After reading, he locked his long hands behind his long head and creaked back his chair, smiling sardonically. It was not surprising that he had quit work on the day before at that point. The next promised step was an outline of psychology, an intelligible outline which would wedge its way into the minds of men who took no stock in it-physicists, chemists and biologists galore, doctors of medicine and businessmen too-all sorts of persons who sneered at Freud (still!) even while they adopted crazed notions for present

  “guidance” and who (in many cases) would not have the imagination or the logic or the freedom from traditional bias to listen to a Jungian hypothesis.

  “Jerks!” he said aloud.

  He could begin with James, where most of those who considered themselves well educated had left off. James was academically acceptable. In the universities, everything beyond James was generally called “abnormal psychology” if it was mentioned at all.

  Well, damn it, they should know by now how abnormal their psychology was! People nationalistic enough to threaten each other with the death of life ought by now to be able to discern no nonnormal processes in their sluggard wits! And if that did not shake them, there was still more material. Women . . .

  He wrote—beginning with James.

  Anger drove him on. Anger that men who called themselves scientists could develop the physical branches of knowledge without paying the slightest heed to the parallel developments in psychic truth. He allowed that wrath to show a little in the text—used sarcasm—lectured his erudite readership for its oversight, and his peroration was finished by the time Connauth arrived.

  The minister was not a large man—five feet six, possibly—and a hundred and fifty pounds. The black robes he wore in the pulpit merely produced an illusion of size.

  There was a further cause for the illusion. St. Paul’s had been constructed under Connauth’s aegis; he had seen to it that every appointment of the pulpit had been scaled down to give him a greater seeming. And there was his voice, the bland basso which Gaunt had imagined would be expected of God Himself by the faithful. That also suggested size.

  Entering Gaunt’s screen porch, in a white suit, not very clean, a black dickey and a clerical collar, the pastor seemed ordinary-sized enough—diminished, even, by nervousness. A frown marred the standard benignity of the brow above his sumptuous nose. His meek gray eyes were anxious. His fingers flurried the handkerchief that mopped his face. “Hot,” he said.

  “Pretty warm. Glad to see you, John. Sit ye doon.”

  The Bishop glanced admiringly at the flower bed. “Nice! Since they went—we’ve had almost no altar flowers.”

  “Send somebody out next Sunday,” Gaunt answered, “and they can pick these.”

  The Bishop’s eyes brightened. ‘‘That’s most generous of you!”

  Gaunt stuffed a pipe—he was conserving cigarettes, now, since they, too, were rationed. “What’s on your mind?”

  “I phoned for the appointment”—the clergyman hesitated—“well! We’ve known each other for some while. We’re friends. You aren’t—of my persuasion; I despaired, long ago, of ever convincing either you or Paula of the inner values of our Christian symbolism—”

  The philosopher shook his head in a friendly way. He blew pipe smoke and watched it drift into a sunbeam with the mild grief of a habitual user of cigarettes. He looked at the pipe, then, and put it in an ashtray. “That’s not quite the way I’d like it put. I think I understand your symbolism, John. I’m interested in them all—which prevents me from adopting any single set.”

  “Do you consider yourself a Christian?”

  Gaunt thought that over. “It would depend who asked me.”

  The minister smiled. “Man, that’s a fine reply! Splendid! Would in my case, too, as a matter of fact! If one of those stiff-necked Baptists inquired—by Jove!—I’d have to say no! Why would I? Simply because, from his viewpoint, what I believe wouldn’t make me a Christian at all!”

  “Exactly.”

  The minister’s brows contracted again. He stared off into the woods and at the houses beyond the woods. “I came over, Bill, for two reasons. One—ever since you and Paula used to live next door to Berthene and me—I’ve liked you.”

  “Ever since you took that chaplainship and went off to the wars, John, I’ve not only liked you, but greatly admired you.”

  Connauth flushed faintly and beamed, not faintly. “That war. Seems far off. Great heaven—what years! What cataclysms! And what an apocalyptic situation we still are in-despite our belated peace on earth! Well—let’s not swap flattery. One—I like you.

  Two—you’re the most knowledgeable man I’m acquainted with. I came to pick your brains. Frankly, I need guidance. I’m supposed to supply it but find the road is full of hazards I’m ill equipped to estimate.”

  “And not just you!”

  “I know.” The clergyman paused again and again pondered. “There’s a great schism rising amongst the people—the men. It’s tragic. One breach healed, burned out in blood and fire, and another yawns.”

  “Natural law.”

  “Perhaps. Your ‘opposites.’ Though I don’t believe in that heathen thesis. Not exactly. Yet—”

  “Read the Par
ables.”

  Connauth nodded. “I know. I try. See here. On the one hand, we have a rising mass tendency to deal physically, corporeally, lewdly with women. Their memory. Have you noticed?”

  Gaunt gestured. “Sure.”

  “I mean—take the movies. Every sexy film ever made is being revived. Theaters mobbed at night. And plays. Men doing the women’s parts—overdoing them. Ribald throngs whistling and cheering. Cafes—with every sort of obscene presentation of the impersonated female. I understand, from one of my trustees”—the clergyman leaned forward and whispered in a shocked, confidential tone—”there is a growing underground market, a black market, in actually vile motion pictures! Shown in clubs—at smokers—

  private homes—that sort of thing.”

  “Bound to be.”

  “Tremendously obscene. Tremendously—stimulating. Tremendously—ah—

  frustrating.”

  “Ever see one?” Gaunt asked.

  “Heaven forbid!”

  Gaunt chuckled. “You wouldn’t find it stimulating, I suspect. I’m not sure.

  Childish, and maybe rather—sad. See here, John, didn’t you anticipate this sort of thing?”

  “I must say, I didn’t—in the first few weeks.”

  “What did you think would happen? That—sex would be put away in lavender?”

  “I presume I did—if I thought about it at all.”

  “Then—you didn’t think.”

  “But—what’s going on! Monstrous!”

  The philosopher shook his head. “Not unless you thought sex was monstrous before the women vanished. After all, it’s still the same thing—but just without them.”

  The minister meditated over that and said, “Don’t you feel, Bill, that it would be sensible to try to outlaw all this rot and rubbish and travesty?”

  “I don’t believe you could. Not enforce such laws.”

  “But isn’t this a golden opportunity, always granted the women are restored to us someday—and what’s the use of thinking otherwise—to suppress, to erase the vulgarism?